Nathan Fielding

praeterita mutare non possumus

The Nicaragua Revolution

Yesterday I watched a documentary about the history of Nicaraguan revolution. I feel sorry for Nicaragua because since 1500s, they have been exploited by the western colonists. They gained their independence in 1821 only to lose it again, and again by the involvement of foreign countries. Here is an excerpt from Encarta:

The Fall Movie Review

The movie was not self exposing, and the meaning had to be carved out from the intricately meshed story, and to make an interpretation or sense of this film was by no means as easy watching some hollywood movie. First of all, for someone who knows about 1001 nights, it is nearly impossible to miss the similarities. But this time, the man was telling the girl stories to get her to do stuff for him such as stealing morphine. To my understanding, there were 4 layers of meaning: 1- The man's narrative, 2- The girl's story, 3- A criticism of early 20th century society, 4- A psychological narrative about relations between men and women. There were also a lot of symbols such as Americana Exotica butterfly, but I could not unpack all of them. The man is a stunt who worked in films and did dangerous things that actors themselves could not. As a result he got seriously injured and is in bad shape. The girl too had to collect oranges and fell from the top of the tree and broke her arm. These lead me to think that the director wanted to criticize that period. The girl teaches him that there is love, that she loves him even if she is not his biological daughter and prevents him from ending the story badly (just like in 1001 nights). As for the third narrative, as far as I understood, the man lost his love to a richer person. There was a touch on the economical relations in the society. Finally it is because of this pain of betrayal that he wants to suicide, and cannot take this situation any longer. While he uses these stories to manipulate the girl, eventually he succumbs to the emotional attachment that this story telling has created between him and the girl.

12.01.2018

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Daedalus, in Greek mythology, Athenian architect and inventor who designed the labyrinth for King Minos of Crete. It was built as a prison for the Minotaur, a man-eating monster that was half man and half bull. The labyrinth was so skillfully designed that no one who entered it could escape from the Minotaur. Daedalus revealed the secret of the labyrinth only to Ariadne, daughter of Minos, and she aided her lover, the Athenian hero Theseus, to slay the Minotaur and escape. In anger at the escape, Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus in the labyrinth. Although the prisoners could not find the exit, Daedalus made wax wings so that they could both fly out. Icarus, however, flew too near the sun; his wings melted, and he fell into the sea. Daedalus flew to Sicily, where he was welcomed by King Cocalus. Minos later pursued Daedalus but was killed by the daughters of Cocalus

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

Ozymandias

Can old cars be turned electric so that the transition gets much faster? What will happen when the geopolitics of oil change? Will it not improve the state of politics driven by the interest in oil resources? Electric is not geographically restrictive. Everyone can have it anywhere unlike oil.

26.06.2017

I have some Kazakh students coming over to Istanbul university, and since I also know Russian, I was given the opportunity to guide them through the city which made me make a research about Istanbul and prepare this guide.

11.03.2017

Do not litter

We are told not to litter. When you litter it's a problem, but when you dump it ain't.

06.03.2017

Arduino by Using Arduino, and open source software, you can term them into a variety of electronic devices.Ultraviolet charging
Li-fi is a new technology which I believe will revolutionize internet speeds at least in enclosed environments. Light is not interceptible beyond walls so it provides extra security for the transmission of data. This could be a revolution for data security for transactions. It is 100x faster than current wireless technologies. Think about it like fiber-optics unveiled.

Deserving

If we accept that people deserve punishment or praise, and base our judgment on the notion of "deserving" we should fight against everything that is not deserved, such as inherited money, exploitation of labour, forex trading, gambling, accumulation of wealth, nepotism, and so on. If you judge people and put them in prison because they deserved punishment because of what they have done, then you must take away everything that is not deserved. However, the world we live in shows us that bankers, corporations, traders, politicians, singers and football players and all kinds of scoundrels get what they do not deserve. Is it not then that these people also be put in prison? Or is it only the poor that gets caught as Solon says, and are laws not just the implementation of the state's power, i.e. oppression? How then can you regard laws with you respect? How can you regard with respect the states that force you to slavery, and binds you to its service? Obedience to the state is slavery, and is there one such today who is not a slave? Show me.

07.05.2017

Industrialized countries have a lower birth-rate argument

This is a myth created to saturate the panic about the increasing population worldwide. They state that because of safety nets such as health insurance and retirement pay, and lower infant mortality, people in the industrialized countries are less prone to giving birth to many children and that other countries will also follow the same trend. They fail to notice 2 things.
1- The industrialization process itself is greatly harmful to the environment and it is those industrialized countries who are pressuring the environment the most with all their luxury and consumerism obtained mostly via exploitation.
2-Due to compounding and exponential growth the already huge numbers of people who live in the world will not be diminishing in any time soon even if the population growth rate could be kept under 2%. It would take a few generations before the old would pass away and the populatin would decrease. A few decades of population growth rates of 2% is not likely to be maintained. United nations projects that the population by 2100 will be 11 million. If they are basing this judgment on the low rate of population growth and a similar decrease in other countries via taking the industrial path, it means the destruction of our habitation, and life on earth may not or will not be possible by then. We have hard pressing issues that demand action now. This UN prediction is misleading. It seems that it is not clear to many under which perilous conditions we live today.
Birth rates may be lower in industrialized countries but their effects on environment is a lot worse.

06.05.2017American and Japanese societies

I have met some Japanese people in my life and I found it a lot more difficult on first meeting to get into a conversation with them. I think it is partly due to the mobility of American life, and how mixed it is. Whereas in Japan conversations do not emerge so suddenly with strangers I presume. It takes time for them from what I have seen. They seem a lot more reserved. They have not just a physical personal space but also a social personal space which you cannot just barge in right away.

02.05.2017

Essentials

When there are grave anomalies in a paradigm and not peripheral indicators but central constituents are amiss and wrong, there is no point in looking for the correctness of an insignificant part of it. What you need to do is to throw it away and get or make yourself a new paradigm. There are cases where it is simply implausible to throw everything away no matter how inappropriate they are so that order can be maintained. However, when disorder reaches high levels, chaos may be more desirable. It is not as if there are no alternatives. The present status quo can only be preserved if other alternatives are not taken into consideration.

28.04.2017

WaveHub, Eccleshall Biomass, and the food industry

What I learned from McLachlan's article "Technologies in place" is that there are various interpretations about the siting of renewable energy projects, which sounds like a confirmation of the 5 tropes of Sextus Empiricus one of which is dissent. There are always or can always be various interpretations of any issue. As for the biofuel company, although they have made changes in the fuel that they first proposed and decided to use some other fuel instead which was suspected to be harmful and dangerous, the company is up and running. So, either the public was somehow convinced, or it didn't matter at all about what the public thought.
More interesting is, if the survival of our species rested on our changing habits and beginning to eat insects, I think humanity would have become extinct as changing habits are so difficult despite its consequences. The food that we produce have a huge impact on climate.

27.04.2017Aaron Scwartz and Inside Job documentaries

Aaron Scwartz was either directly or indirectly killed by the government while those who have stolen billions in 2008 hoax which led to a global economic crisis have dinner with the president. The documentary starts with a very important quote by Henry David Thoreau that unjust laws exist followed by two questions: should we try to amend them, or transgress them at once. However, what Thoreau seems to have missed there is that all laws are unjust which is well displayed by the great novel of Tolstoy called the Resurrection. This delusion of the welfare state and democracy and justice are blinding people from seeing the nature of power that these institutions are concealing from the people. It is a masquerade. People's complicity is obtained first through indoctrination of the benevolent nature of these institutions, and later through legal and physical exertion of force. Force is used implicitly and in disguise, and not head on. However, this should not fool us to think that we are free. As long as there are armies and police and institutions of detainment and punishment, humanity will remain as slaves, and the best you can get is the fate of Spartacus, nothing more. The movie "if a tree falls" which narrates how Earth Liberation Front was seized by FBI bears witness to the power of the state and the incapacity of individuals in disobeying and challenging it. Those who do not move do not realize their chains. Men are born free, but are in shackles everywhere. Civilization have made us slaves through force, and we have quite forgotten that we were forced into this and now we behave as the anteceding generations of monkeys who forgot how they were put in the cage, and we have come to mistake our cage for our freedom. Is there a way out of the brutalities of the corporations, states and their accomplices? Perhaps. Perhaps Humanity will find an ingenious way to get rid of these menacing institutions and will liberate itself from the tyrants. The next step after that would be to learn how to live in harmony. Humanity is far from achieving these goals as long as states and corporations exist.

25.02.2017Hyper-normalization

I have found an interesting documentary on the pirate party's webpage called Hyper-normalization made by BBC, and it is a very interesting documentary. Having 5 courses in one semester, I have less time to devote on my website and learning about programming and web-development.

22.02.2017

Pirate Parties

Pirate parties present an alternative to corrupt political systems that are pervasive throughout the world. New padadigms must replace the old and obsolete forms of government which are dysfunctioning. Pirate Party International
We are told that we are thieves if we download a piece of music, a movie, or a book. Those in power who charge people of stealing, I pose this rhetorical question to thee hypocrites: "hath thou naught stolen?" Who are you to wave your finger at us? In a world built on exploitation, theft, and crime, where wall street brokers steal millions a second, where incomes are so disparately distributed, are you to tell us that to buy a book we must pay 50 bucks or else we are thieves? The pot calling the kettle black...

Downward spiral

People of no merit come to positions through connections and use those positions for self-gain, and then we ask why everything goes wrong.

Zerkalo

Dreams

Contrast is important

Whether in design or in various aspects of life, contrast is necessary in order to understand the difference. That's what colours are: if there was only one color, we wouldn't havee been able to distinguish anything. You might not like cold, but what sense of temperature would you have if it had always been constant? There are also contrasts in different climates which gives us the sense of what climates are. So everything is justified

Everytihng is not going to be okay

Some people don't have a way out of their problems. They are victims of circumstances.

Ideologies of Comfort

Whether it is served by capitalism that everyone has equal chance to succeed as long as they try; or by religion which, as Marx said, is the "opium of the masses" as it takes the focus from "here and now" to "there and then" where transgressers shall be punished and the weak and meek shall be rewarded; or in romance where sexual relationships is taken out of its social backdrop and placed in a vacuum of idealized love which has no interest in anything other than love.
Love is a cloak of the ashamed civilized human which they wear to hide their naked body which is neither like other animals nor indeed different from them. Love is a cloak like any other. Clothes are worn originally to protect from the climate conditions, however it is also a cloak of social status and a tool to attract mates.

Expectations increase over time

They say that happiness or success comes when you least expect, and that you shouldn't be seeking them. But how can you pretend you are not seeking something when you are? And As long as you will be seeking they will keep avoiding you according to this dictum.

05.01.2017

Isn't that familiar? The boat is the world, the man in the green is the environmentalist or a humanist, or just anyone who is in favor of the continuation of life on earth, and the others are the states, corporations, terrorists, and everyone else who are actively diminishing the chances of our survival.

Success

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Once upon a time there was a young beaver named Al and an older beaver named Arthur. They were both in love with a pretty little female. She looked with disfavor upon the young beaver's suit because he was a harum-scarum and a ne'er-do-well. He had never done a single gnaw of work in his life, for he preferred to eat and sleep and to swim lazily in the streams and to play Now-I'll-Chase-You with the girls. The older beaver had never done anything but work from the time he got his first teeth. He had never played anything with anybody.
When the young beaver asked the female to marry him, she said she wouldn't think of it unless he amounted to something. She reminded him that Arthur had built thirty-two dams and was working on three others, whereas he, Al, had never even made a bread-board or a pin tray in his life. Al was very sorry, but he said he would never go to work just because a woman wanted him to. Thereupon she offered to be sister to him, but he pointed out that he already had seventeen sisters. So he went back to eating and sleeping and swimming in the streams and playing Spider-in-the-Parlor with the girls. The female married Arthur one day at the lunch hour — he could never get away from work for more than one hour at a time. They had seven children and Arthur worked so hard supporting them he wore his teeth down to the gum line. His health broke in two before long and he died without ever having had a vacation in his life. The young beaver continued to eat and sleep and swim in the streams and play Unbutton-Your-Shoe with the girls. He never Got Anywhere, but he had a long life and a Wonderful Time. Moral: It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
(Source: Thurber, James. Fables for Our Time. New York, 1940.)

6.12.2016

If you are going to rebel against the husband you must also rebel against the state and the religion and all the ideologies thereof.Don't try, Bukowski

06.11.2016

Today I met my best friend for his birthday party celebration and we talked about so many things.

Behaviourism

Bandura Skinner and Pavlov and the construction of behaviours.
Here are the links:

I believe that through the education system, media, environment, and everything that surround us, our behaviour is being constantly modified and changed. Capitalists use these to make us buy more and more of unnecessary things and to shape the society in a way which suits them.

My friend just sent me a video of Chomsky about Democracy and we discussed it a little bit. He knows that I am not a fan of democracy at all. However sometimes I do favor democracy while usually I condemn it as a tyranny of majority. I told him that Oscar Wilde had put it nicely when he said: "Other people are quite dreadful, the only possible society is oneself." Then he shared another quote with me which went: "Happiness is only real when it is shared."

"To be happy is to share, to share is to be unhappy." Nathan Fielding

06.11.2016

I met with a friend to go to Ashiyan museum. It was a wonderful place next to the Rumeli fortress. The view was perfect and it had a tranquilizing effect. We went there half an hour before they closed. We joined a group and learnt about a Turkish poet called 'Tevfik Fikret'. on the way back we listened to some Turkish music on the bus from my friend's nostalgic casette mp3 player. On the way back I wanted to visit an Indian restaurant but it was too lat.

07.11.2016

My website goes online for the first time although it is not beautiful yet. Big thanks to my friends who are hosting my website.
Instead of studying for my exams, I spent a few hours working on this website.

12.11.2016

I had to give a break to coding because I have lost my flashcard and all the codes were there. However, I have recovered all of the codes today, if not the Flashdrive.
I have learned two coding languages in two weeks: HTML and CSS, of course I don't know all the details but I know the outlines of these two languages. They were fairly simple. I resigned my job as they hadn't given me a copy of the contract.
I had guests in the morning, and then met with my friend. I returned home to have a barbecue. Printed Kuhn's book and Well Tempered Clavier.

15.05.2015

Alexander Sokurov and The Russian Ark

I watched The Russian Ark in order to improve my Russian but only after finishing it did I learn that it was by Aleksander Sokurov, a renowned Russian film director. I found the film quite peculiar, and it was like nothing I had seen before. It is a 90 minutes long single shot which is very impressive in its own right, but as the director himself says, only the artistic and inherent quality of the output and not the techniques involved in its making is what he would be proud of.
And here are: Ivan The Terrible by Segei Eisenstein Part1Part 2Rimsky Korsakov Mozart K427Carl Orff Carmina Burana

World Passport

On Praise of Human Folly: Chemicals

What is dichlorobenzene? What actually is Naphthalene? Bromine? These are only the ones that I have learnt after a brief research upon buying a freely available chemical from a house-cleaning materials market. It cost only 1 dollar. I bought it in order to get rid of the smell that infected our bathroom, but upon reading the instructions on the back, I have noticed that it is a highly dangerous chemical, and consulted to Wikipedia. Upon making a thralling research of few hours, even from the beginning it was evident that the use of such chemicals was totally wrong.
First of all, it is a carcinogen, classified as harmful to organisms and almost insoluble by nature. Consider the amount of detergents, and chemicals that we are using everyday. Imagine now that someone was adding cleaning chemicals to your food! How do you feel? Why then are we polluting each other’s environment from which eventually we are providing our nourishment and food? Take a look at the cleaning chemicals that you are using at your house, and make a little research about it. How do you feel spilling that into the sewage, to the lakes, sea, water, and the very land on which we sow our grocery?
—
In order to disinfect the public drainage system, water pools are getting chlorinated. Chloride enters in chemical reactions with the bacteria and viruses, and virtually all organisms that is present in the water and destroys them. This creates Half-life in the water, which means the dead micro organisms. It disinfects the bacteria and viruses, but it also destroys all organisms, most of which are healthy for human metabolism. Furthermore, the digestion of these Half-Life, by-products are also carcinogen, because they are not able to be dismissed from the body, and creates tumors.
Just spare a few hours, and witness the human folly.
In this Section I will publish the findings on my every-day use chem products. Eventually, I will try to provide some possible alternatives to change and mend our wrong ways.
The most innocent looking products that we use, have adverse effects to our health. Inquiring upon the ingredients of Listerine, I have come upon “poloxamer 407” and checked it on Wikipedia. it is a surfactant, and a surfactant is a sort of emulsifier that mingles two normally separate liquids such as oil and water. Poloxamer 407 is one such surfactant, that has a known issue of increasing cholesterol by ten-folds. Still, the famous mouthwash Listerine is using it without any warning.
:::The mouthwashes that we are using to keep our mouth clean, increases our cholesterol and causes heart diseases.
Listerine has ‘Benzoic Acid’ which indulges in reactions with vitamin C and creates ‘benzene’ which is a carcinogen: “Concern has been expressed that benzoic acid and its salts may react with ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in some soft drinks, forming small quantities of benzene.[16]
Goodness my goodness:
Toxicology of CI 42053 (green dye)
This substance has been found to have tumorigenic effects in experimental animals, as well as mutagenic effects in both experimental animals and humans. It furthermore risks irritation of eyes, skin, digestive tract, and respiratory tract in its undiluted form.
I have made up my mind… I have spent the money on harmful thrash. At least I have understood how harmful it is, and will never use it again. But do tell me this please: How can anyone know about the harms of these ingredients? We buy these products with the assumption that they must have been passing some health checks, but evidently, corporations need to earn money.
It seems better to stay clear from such products at all costs. Yet, it is not just the mouthwash that is polluted with artificial products, but also the food we eat… This is the result of using chemicals and artificial products without responsibility… We are polluting the nature and as with nature – ourselves.

May 8, 2011

Chess Analogies

Chess is a very important game to improve your mind and it gives you a different perspective on everything. It is an important experience to gain. Although lately I’m trying to play the Chinese Go game, chess has provided me with lots of analogies. The story began when I was in Turkmenistan and a doctor who worked there taught me the rules of chess when I was 10 years old, but it wasn’t until the age of 16 or 17 that I started playing intensely. I used to play 7-8 times a day with my father.
It wasn’t until I met Chessmaster (grandmaster edition) that I came to appreciate chess, and to learn it theoretically rather than by experience. I was taught by Josh Waitzkin in the chess academy. After reading his twelve page article I came to understand that chess is not just a game.
I played a lot and it became an addiction which is the bad side of this game but here are some analogies that I have drawn from chess.

What difference does it make?

Consider that there are 8 pawns on the black side and 7 pawns on the white side. What is the difference? 1 over 8. Grab one by one from each side simultaneously. 8-7, 7-6, 6-5, 5-4, 4-3, 3-2, 2-1… And the difference is increased to 1\2. Consider yourself in a world where there are 7 billion people. What difference does it make if one is taken out?

The game of chess has 64 squares and an initial formation of the pieces, as well as rules that govern their movement. Weiqi however, is a much more complicated game with a much larger board (361 squares instead of 64) and has only 13 simple rules and no initial set-up. and there is a lot of space for macro strategy. Hence, where chess remains predictable and is related to experience, Weiqi is much more dependent on intuition. However, even in chess which is much simpler than Weiqi, human brain cannot foresee a few moves ahead without a lot thinking, and even then, a plan of 5-10 moves may easily be disrupted by an unexpected move, or a miscalculation. In the game of Weiqi, the issue is a lot more difficult. To foresee or predict an outcome is almost impossible.
id est, while human brain and understanding is incapable of so tiny an endeavor, it is so often assumed unconsciously that our feeble brains can understand a thing; anything.

Therefore,
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

September 29, 2010

Needs and Pleasures of Body and Soul

'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' so is love in the arms\heart of the lover.
This humble theory on human material and spiritual needs was developed from my personal experience and observations as it must be the case. Though it has a background of 3 years or so, it has shaped and improved since then to its current on the way. My friend who is in psychology department in our so called university recently announced me that there was a similar theory from Abraham Maslow. As it is the case with most of my ideas, I first thought it was original, unthinkable, marginal and so and so. Although no major development in the course of this theory was made, it was thoroughly sufficient to explain most matters that I have touched upon so far. Maybe this is due to the lack of people who were to delineate on the subject and provide an anti-thesis. However I found courage enough to put this theory in your just hands for appropriate criticism, be it negative or positive. So there you go,
Well the thing seems simple. But it isn’t. That is probably the reason for it’s beauty for it is like a poem, short but intense.

Material

Spiritual

Shelter\Protection

Reading

Sleep

Philosophy

Food

Arts

Shopping

Music

Cleanliness

Mysticism

-----------------

------------------

Sex

Love (family/friends/opposite sex)

I have experienced and observed two type of needs: Material and Spiritual.
As you may see in the table below, most of these material things are needs up to a level, exceeding which it becomes a pleasure. If we sleep more than necessary, it is a pleasure, or if we eat more than we need we eat for the taste and greed of it. Besides these there are other actions which I classify as material pleasures such as shopping and watching T.V. In the material need and pleasures section, I have divided sex in the barest sense to the material need and pleasures.
On the other hand just as we need water when we are thirsty, we need to nourish our soul, with philosophy, with arts, with love. Now philosophy and arts are too broad terms. It includes many human activities, which distinguish us from the rest of the animals. So actually we may probably say that what makes us human is in the second category. But humans are also creatures on earth. So no need to go astray in neither poles. No need to go too spiritual or too materialistic. (I am hesitant to count religion and worship among the spiritual needs and pleasures for complicated reasons, mostly because I do not wish to simplify religion to a mere need, presenting itself in the fear of a weak creature.)
Love is a totally different topic. It is one of the essential things that makes life worth living for. In my opinion, it is a glimpse from God, an action of the soul, shining in our worldly bodies. So far I couldn’t find more than 3 types of love. Those are the love that is present in your family environment, the love that you receive from your friends, and the love that is mutually shared by lovers. The lack of these spiritual needs might cause your death just as a lack of material needs may kill you. One kills the body, the other the soul. A healthy being must get a good diet of both.
Now for Abraham Maslow; Abraham Maslow puts forward the idea of D-lovers and B-lovers. D stands for Deficiency, where as ‘B’ stands for Be. Be-lovers are those who were granted love, and had a good diet of it. And De-lovers are those who lack a proper consumption of love. As a result they usually have bad relationships with human beings. Loneliness, lack of trust in others, and so on.
In the book ‘Art of Love’ Eric Fromm says that human cannot bear absolute loneliness a single day. As for Oscar Wilde, he uttered thus “Thinking is as dangerous as any other disease, many a people died from it.” though it might seem irrelevant. The relevance of this is that, too much thinking does you a great deal of alienation from the society, and that would lead you to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury regarding the meaning of social and anti-social, which would probably lead you to Oswald Spengler’s ‘Progressive Societies’ and so on.
If one gets to feed only their material needs, their bellies would be full but minds and hearts would lack proper care. For those who are accidentally reading this with their bellies full and all the rest being empty, don’t be offended but you lack what makes humans different from animals. One has to strive to broaden their minds and their love. For as Thomas Aquinas said: “You believe in what you understand, and you understand what you believe in.” The same case with love. As you understand more, you will get to love more, forgive more, which is why forgiveness is a virtue. Its fountain is love.
Still going too much to the extremes of spirituality would make you starve like Hindu or Buddhist ascetics. Why to kill the desire, which is there for us to come closer, and unite.
The problem is to keep the balance between too much thinking and isolation, and finding at least a degree of satisfactory love. Don’t do too much thinking and isolate yourself from the society, or since you have tasted the poison of philosophy go on and try to find someone who can both love and understand you, if you may…
"Love one another" Jesus

Meritocracy

Under the Song, the imperial bureaucracy operated as a true meritocracy open to talent. The state recruited functionaries not through political or hereditary connections, but rather based on ability and performance on exacting state civil-service exams, which provided virtually exclusive access to political power

29.12.2016

Are humans Evil, Neutral or Good in nature?

There are various beliefs concerning this issue, however, the positivist and negativist views doesn't make sense to me, for if people are good in nature wherefore all this evil? This view is incongruous, unless of course the problem of alienation is included and the goodness of humanity is reduced to interpersonal affairs. The negativist view is also senseless, as it renders us incapable of hope, unless we are to take it as a general statement and include the possibility of "a few good men" to place the burden on all but their shoulders. However, Confucius thought that Humans were defined by the education and culture they receive. This seems to be the most sensible answer to this question. However, the problem of alienation persists. Once the institutions are alienated and a culture is corrupted, what then must we do? The state and corporations are too powerful and they crush any dissidence by individuals or groups as soon as they start burgeoning and taking roots. The trees that have risen have left others in the shade.

19.11.2016

5 Ways to kill a man

People ask me about football, and when I say I hate it, they get surprised. I simply find it so unjust that while people are literally dying of poverty some useless and dumb football player gets millions of dollars for being able to chase after a ball. You may want to play it as a sport and that's okay, but it is downright stupid to be a fanatic, bet on football matches, or feel connected to it in any way. If you are not bothered by the injustice of this, there is probably a problem with you, not with me.
And here is the kind of football that I enjoy:

27.11.2016

On Writing and the Medium of communication & Announcing new pages

Writing makes an exact man Francis Bacon, Essays, On Studies
Having a website is having an extension of one's mind, one's public mind, and a presentation of one's self. This website is provoking me to put the things that I have already learnt and found in here, and to find more good stuff to add here. Therefore it helps keep my mind more vigorous. It is also a way of saving things in time, and being able to look back and see yourself. It is great if you think about it, to be able to give your children something they can read about their parents. Or allow other people to get to know you without you talking to them. The medium of writing has its pros and cons, speaking has others, and every medium gives shape and additional features to the content. Writing allows you to develop your mind and ideas and to organize them. As my father says, The right medium of thought is writing.

04.12.2016

Going to the Belgrade forest for the second time. Nature is not silent but quiet and welcoming, and buzzing with all kinds of creatures pleasant and unpleasant. The difference between the city and nature is that nature is beautiful, serene, and sublime, while cities are ugly, stressful, and unwelcoming. Cities corrupt nature ->

People often judge and evaluate before they even know or understand. Furthermore, since complete understanding is not possible all judgments are actually false.

07.12.2016

An Oxymoron

"Public Media"
I find it abhorrent that some people think of television as public media, because there is nothing public about them and it is a one-way medium. It is not interactive, and not participatory. Internet is public although it has limitations as well.
Micro and macro strategies for solving problems:
There is a great game called Weiqi, it is much more interesting and profound than chess, way more ambiguous and unpredictable. There is a lot more macro strategy involved in this game as it has a much larger field of action and the action is not as limited as in chess. This is the game on which I base my idea that micro strategies are not sufficient to solve macro problems. We cannot solve global problems through individuals decisions alone. People are directed in their actions and they do not decide on their free will. Even if there is some free will individually, when put under such a constraining system, it doesn't allow people to exert their free will. The system has done much to stop the mutagenic effect of the free will. The system wants you to obey and conform and that is the point of schooling: to produce conforming, obedient slaves.

Racism is when you judge someone for the color of their skin or the race they are from without looking at the contents of his character. The same process is applied when people categorize and label you according to your place of birth, or other such indicators.

09.12.2016

Arrival film Review

Language shapes your thoughts is the theory of Sapir-Whorf, and this movie is based on that premise.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), American anthropological linguist, known for his theory of linguistic relativity, which asserts that a person's view of reality is shaped to a large extent by the linguistic system of the language used. -more->
Born at Winthrop, Massachusetts, Whorf attended public schools there and majored in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1919 he began a long career at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company and eventually became its assistant secretary. He remained with the company until his death, pursuing his scholarly interests in his spare time.
In 1931 Whorf took a course on Native American linguistics at Yale University, taught by Edward Sapir, one of the most influential linguists of the time. The class crystallized Whorf’s interests in Native American languages and linguistic theory. Subsequent study of the Hopi language laid the groundwork for his theory of linguistic relativity, a theory often called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis because of the strong influence Sapir had on his student and friend.
In Whorf's theory of linguistic relativity, the grammatical and semantic categories of each language, in addition to serving as instruments for communicating a person's thoughts, mold ideas and program mental activity. Thus, people with different native languages will not have the same view of the universe; if their languages are structurally very different, they may even have difficulty communicating about certain topics. For example, if one language has several different words for some closely related objects and another language refers to these objects by a single word, then the speaker of the first language must note perceptually the characteristics that distinguish the objects, whereas the speaker of the second language need not. In this way, according to Whorf, the speakers do not have the same mental picture of the objects. In the English language there is only one word for snow; in the Inuit (Eskimo) language there are several. The speaker of Inuit is required to note distinctions, for example, whether the snow is falling or on the ground, while the speaker of English need note these distinctions only if the occasion arises. Similarly, Whorf argued that grammatical categories such as tense and number also force speakers to perceive the world in particular ways.
The theory of linguistic relativity has been controversial ever since it was proposed. Most linguists and psychologists have argued that a speaker whose language does not make certain distinctions is still able to make those distinctions as the need arises, though perhaps not as readily. Nevertheless, Whorf's theory stimulated considerable discussion and experimentation about the relationship between language and thought, and his pioneering work in these relatively uncharted areas of linguistics helped to shape the course of future research. Whorf published numerous articles on linguistics. Many of them have been collected in Language, Thought, and Reality; Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956). (See also Semantics)

10.12.2016

A Review with Akiro Kurosawa

(excerpt from Encarta)
Kurosawa: They use extremely pedantic terminology. I do not believe in such rationalization or jargon. Film should be more related to human feelings, more candidly. For example, what about “perpendicular thought in film”? They want to indulge in such jargon, but I really do not understand what it means. It is particularly so in music criticism, too. Toru Takemitsu and others have been saying that these critics do not understand anything, wondering what they mean by this jargon.
…Mr. Hideo Kobayashi [a famous art critic—ed.] said that after writing so many critiques, he concluded that the only ones he approved of, after all, were those which praised the works in question. He believed that the role of critics is to encourage artists by finding the good points in their works: to point out bad points is merely absurd. It’s better to shut up. Even if you criticize harshly, the work will not improve. If you really hate it, just ignore it. That’s what he said.
…Artists and critics will never get along. Artists want to be praised, whether or not they deserve it. Moreover, the worst thing is for a critic to write a negative review to spite the rave reviews by others, doing so not because he believes what he writes but because he wants to stand out. Also, critics are free to criticize and say bad things. What I will not tolerate is to attack me with hatred, calling me foolish and stupid. I really do not understand what I have done to this guy to deserve this. Criticism should be done out of affection, not out of hatred.
…The critics in Japan say incomprehensible things. This time, for example, they claimed that I made Ran to make money. I would have made an easier film. This film was too difficult to make. Well, I am used to slanders. It would be a lie to say that I don’t mind. I ignore everything.
Microsoft Encarta.

September 13, 2010

Preface for the old website

Preface
My intention in building this blog was to share my ideas and put them in my blog writings, thus exempting myself from the burden of speech.
I once heard the story of a painter and his master. This painter made a painting which he considered to be beautiful and wanted to demonstrate it to his master. The master said, if you want to learn if this is a beautiful painting, go and put it in the avenue for a day, and leave a pen and paper besides for criticism. He did so, and checked it the day after. To his surprise there were lots of criticism which were full of negative comments. He went back to his master and complained about the criticisms. His reply was, “Now go and this time put brush and colours with the canvas. Leave a note saying that they should correct it where they don’t like.” So did he. The day after he returned to his master with the canvas; sad after seeing that no one actually changed a thing.

11.12.2016

Build to Order vs Build to Stock

The problems of industries that desperately need to change whole of their paradigms, and the stumbling blocks on that way

I watched Arrival yesterday which ended with a great note of unity and love for humanity through alien intervention and changing of paradigms through changing to a new language. I have also recently read a very interesting article from a very nice book called Modern Life by Ernst Klett Stuttgart, in the article called The Big Corporations, it talks about how early capitalists didn't care about the insurance, social security, pensions and the like, but they have come to the understanding, so the article says, that Corporations are merely discovering that when social problems are solved the size of their market grows. Although we may not become philantropists all overnight, we must come to the understanding that we cannot go further without accomplishing unity and peace as humanity, and must therefore work towards attaining this most important goal. This above all else, should be our common goal. The 0 sum game and the prisoner's Dilemma shown in Arrival must not be our fate. We ought to be able to transcend and overcome these problems and learn to work together on a global scale. It is the theory put forth in the Sapiens that the reason Sapiens were able to win against other human groups was that they developed language and myths around which they could unite with larger groups to work together, as religions, nations and unions and federations. However, we must now go through a new evolution and work around not just national myths, but global myths and ideas. Just as Tolstoy says on his Calendar of Wisdom for the 9th of December, it is a human beings duty to serve not just a group of people, but ALL PEOPLE, and that he must not, for the interests of one, do harm to others. This peaceful attitude, this global consciousness is what I am trying to spread as much as I am capable of, and it is my firm conviction that unless we, humanity, overcome the aforementioned problems herein, are doomed to fail as a species and perhaps to go extinct despite all that we have achieved on this tiny speckle of earth without ever reaching out to explore the rest of the universe to find out whether other forms of intelligent life exist, or to understand better and much more fully the nature of the universe, parallel-verse, multi-verse, cosmos, space or whatever you would may prefer to call it.

Are we really intelligent creatures as we assume ourselves to be,
or are we just parasites benefiting from a cultural heritage that we are too feeble to change and direct?

Chain or Grid?

I have come across an interesting distinction talks about how a value-chain implies a linear causality and how they prefer to use the word value-grid in that given context. A grid allows interdependencies, while a chain is connected in a linear fashion. This distinction made me to contemplate the way we usually think of things, which is to think of its causes in much simpler terms. People say, this happened because of that. Things are so intricately woven together that whenever a definition of a cause or a definition of any sort is made is by definition finite. You de-fine something, put borders and draw finishing lines to something, which means you are cutting it off from the organic whole that it exists in and thus removing its meaning. Look at the way the scientists now assume that the brain works, it is much too intricate and interwoven that you cannot take it out just like that. Actually, brain is a great code; you see, we are trying and trying and we haven't been able to decypher it yet... The complexity of it is allowing it to remain a terra incognita for the most part still. The same applies to history, to life, and to everything.

Maturity and Wisdom

For the first time in my life I have helped someone to cheat on an exam for 400 dollars. I wrote her business take-home exam. it took me around 20 hours. I didn't study for my own presentation, and my own obligations. I am 26, and while everyone has cars, houses, jobs, and everyone gets money that they don't deserve, I am here with all the language skills, computer skills, and other abilities, working for 20-30 liras an hour to teach English at a university.
I watched 8MM, a movie with Nicholas Cage, very disturbing. Perhaps more disturbing that Lars von Trier's movies. We are born into this shit. Shit is everywhere, fucking zombies walking in human disguise. I can understand why zombie stuff is so popular.
humans are the playthings of money; instruments of money. ->

Snakes change their scales, some animals can change colors and camouflage. But can you change your essense when it fits you no longer? Can you innovate and become someone else? Forget and be merry and happy again? Like the Cypher from Matrix, I want to change my present. The same applies to humanity, can it change under new circumstances? Death and Rebirth seems to be necessary for a significant change to take place.

15.12.2016

Judgments

We judge too quickly without caring to know. We judge when it is too late to help. We judge from our own point of view, however it suits us. We judge to punish, not to remedy. We judge not ourselves. Life forces us to make moves in this complex game.

Of the importance of context

A man who was selling pretzels on the street had an epilepsy seizure in the middle of the metro. I held his head up, and someone opened his mouth. It looked quite real to me. When he recovered, and came to his senses, he asked people to buy his merchandise. No one bought any. They looked away, and some smirked. They were anxious about his health when they all reached to help him, but they didn't care about the difficulties of his life, and that he had to earn at least a bit of money to keep living.
The context defines everything.

17.12.2016

"Loss of Identity" Are you a slave or a free man?

I have just seen some patriotic bullshit on TV. It is not the "Loss of Identity" that one must worry about; it is the attribution of false identities which are socially constructed. These cultural viruses infect the people that are born in it. We are born into a culture of diseased ideas; worms or tumors in the brain that turn us into madmen, through which all follies of mankind exert themselves. It is exactly these that one must protect heirself. Names, religion, nationality, patriotism, ideologies, norms of behaviour. These are all instruments of controlling individuals. The system does everything to control "mutation". It doesn't want change; it wants to preserve its status quo. It takes all the precautions necessary to prevent this change. Schools, media, military, doctrines, fake political constructs, etc.
We are made to accept the reality of others. They give us a name, they give us an ID card and a passport, they give us "rights" and they give us obligations and limitations and laws. I refuse the entirety of these cultural artifacts. I have my own reality. I as a human being am free in conscience, but as Rousseau says I am bound by shackles everywhere. People are slaves, but I am Spartacus. Roman army killed him. They had also killed Jesus. "No culture allows its central paradigms to be questioned" as Will Durant says, and it is very dangerous to do so.

18.12.2016

Is the solution to science more science?

Or does science create more problems as it develops? The kind of complexity that we are living in today is beyond human capacity. Some think of taking plankton out of the food chain and turning it directly into food to solve the food problem of the world without thinking about what kind of effects this could have on our biology. Others think of creating materials by using viruses and bacteria through genetic modifications by through random gene mutations without considering a hazardous genetic mutation that could quite likely occur which could prove to be very dangerous to everyone. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein long time ago when a scientist created a life-form which was then cast out of society for its awkwardness and turned a criminal. We may create Artificial Intelligence and it is quite possible that eventually it will turn against humanity and destroy it. However, it could be the next generation of a sentient and thinking life form which could over-run us evolutionarily. Perhaps only they could deal with this complexity and these problems properly.
There seems to be no return from the path of science and technology and its exponential steps of "progress". Whether this leads us into creating a benign A.I., space exploration, terraforming, and other marvels, or to a much more likely devastation is yet to be witnessed. If there is something we can do to avert a devastation, we must do our best. If we are bound by some sort of determinism, we may only watch the events unfold to our good or our end.
We ought to adapt Blaise Pascal's attitude towards God and religion: "If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that God exists."
I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic when it comes to the future, nor so selfish and materialist(philosophically) as George Carlin to say something like: "enough complaining and trying to save everything, humans are going to kick the bucket and the world will be fine".
If we are determined, there is nothing to do other than what already are doing. If everything will be fine (which I almost fully doubt) there is no point in worrying, and even if some people worry, it will not change the outcome. If it is in our hands to do something, then we must! And I believe that assuming some level of free will is the only option which matters to us.

19.12.2016

Too many coincidences

Something strange happened just now which led me to write this immediately. I have read somewhere about the whiggish interpretation of history which I had in front of me when I was looking for Winner, Langdon. Then I started reading the article on social engineering as I thought it was related to what I was researching. There was a mention of Popper there, and when I was searching for phenomenology, I found Popper when I opened a random page from the encyclopedia...
Interestingly, I took up the Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a second time to check phenomenology when I encountered the article on Personal Identity on the first page that I opened upon having already written the text below:

Identity is one of those things that are socially constructed. Groups of people consider something a reality and it is treated as a reality, just as imaginary nations, borders and corporations. Over time, these social constructs may become so well established that they assume a cloak of reality where none exist in actuality. Speech acts that philosopher John Searle refers to is one such example. They may even find concrete existence as ID documents and walls and so on. However, to my mind, the nature of their existence goes no further than hallucinations or illusions. These are the kinds of things that phenomenologists were trying to stay away from: attributing and imposing constructed meanings on reality.